Standing Committee E

[Mr. Christopher Chope in the Chair]

Clause 5

School improvement partners

Amendment proposed [30 March]: No. 14, in clause 5, page 3, line 22, at end insert ‘underperforming or coasting'.—[Mr. Hayes.]

Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 17, in clause 5, page 3, line 23, after ‘maintain', insert
‘that is not highly performing'.
No. 18, in clause 5, page 3, line 25, at end insert—
‘(1A) A school is “highly performing” if it meets such standards as the Secretary of State shall by regulation prescribe.'.
No. 19, in clause 5, page 3, line 30, at end insert—
‘(2A) Where a school fails to improve within two years of the appointment of a school improvement partner, a new school improvement partner shall be appointed.
(2B) A person appointed as a school improvement partner who has been replaced twice as a school improvement partner under the provisions of subsection (2A) shall cease to be an accredited person under subsection (2).'.
No. 20, in clause 5, page 3, line 30, at end insert—
‘( ) The Secretary of State shall publish his departmental policies in relation to the appointment of school improvement partners.'.
No. 15, in clause 5, page 3, line 40, at end insert—
‘“coasting”, in relation to a maintained school, means a school which in the previous academic year was in the third quartile nationally of the value added measure of school performance;'.
No. 16, in clause 5, page 4, line 4, at end insert—
‘“under-performing”, in relation to a maintained school, means a school which in the previous academic year was in the fourth quartile nationally of the value added measure of school performance.'.

Nick Gibb: It is nice to be back after our short Easter break. My hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) ably set out our concerns about imposing school improvement partners on all schools, including highly performing schools. One thing that irritates teachers and head teachers alike is time-consuming bureaucratic demands, whether they involve form-filling, reading the latest lever-arch file of partially relevant or irrelevant advice or attending meetings with local authorities or imposed school improvement partners.
School improvement partners are a good idea for raising standards in underperforming schools, but they will put a huge burden on good schools. I met the head teacher of one of the best-performing secondary schools in London, who found her school improvement partner to be an irritant that she could have done without. As far as she was concerned, it brought no added value to the school. Sir Kevin Satchwell, headmaster of Thomas Telford school, said to me that one of the best things about his school being a technology college is that he does not have to attend interminable meetings with the local authority. He believes that a head teacher should be in the school, focusing on raising and maintaining standards.
If all schools are to have school improvement partners, those partners should at least be well qualified and competent. Amendments Nos. 19 and 20 would introduce a mechanism to remove the accreditation of SIPs who are not fulfilling their role effectively and whose advice is not resulting in improvements to the school. Under amendment No. 19, if a school did not improve within two years of the appointment of a particular SIP, he would be replaced. If a SIP were replaced twice, he would lose his accreditation. Nothing can be worse than being advised by someone who is not up to the job. Amendment No. 19 would give the SIP a second chance. To fail once may be regarded as a misfortune; to fail twice looks like carelessness.
Amendment No. 20 specifies that the Department should publish policies on school improvement partners. I am delighted that the Government have published a statement of policy intent, and I shall speak to that policy when we debate amendments Nos. 190 and 191.

Sarah Teather: In responding to the Conservative amendments, I note that the answer to the question whether all schools need a SIP depends, as we discussed during the last Committee sitting, on whether its role is to be a critical friend offering advice and support or to be the heavy hand of Whitehall—or perhaps I should say the heavy hand of the local education authority.
During the holidays, the Department issued new guidance on schools causing concern. The guidance, although relevant to amendments Nos. 46 to 60, is predicated on the discussion that we are having now. I should like to place on record my irritation that it was not sent to Committee members before or even immediately after it was issued in the press. We have come to expect things to be floated in The Times before being sent to most Members of Parliament, but we had a right to expect the guidance to be sent to the Committee during the holidays. As far as I am aware, it was not sent to any Committee members, although it was e-mailed to directors of children’s services.
I hope that that will not be a pattern for the rest of Committee consideration. The Government will inevitably issue a variety of guidance, and the Committee has a right to scrutinise and discuss it at the appropriate time. It would have been particularly helpful if we had received this before we began clause 5. It is of some concern that we did not and I should like to place that on the record. May I ask you, Mr. Chope, to request that the Government do not do this in future?

Jacqui Smith: I welcome you, Mr. Chope, and members of the Committee back to what I always think of as the summer term. I suspect that any request to hold the Committee outside in the lovely sunshine would be turned down, just as I turned down similar requests from my pupils when I was teaching.
We return to our discussions on clause 5. I should like first to respond to the hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather), who does not seem to have been imbued with the sunshine like the rest of us. Given the wealth of regulations and guidance that I have so far made available in ample time for the Committee to consider them alongside the clauses, and as I will this week make available the regulations and guidance relevant to part 4 so that we can consider them when we get to it, her comments were slightly churlish.

Sarah Teather: It would have been helpful if the material had at least been published on the Department’s website, but it is still not available there, so it is impossible for us to get hold of it unless a director of children’s services provides it.

Jacqui Smith: As I pointed out, I will, as I have done scrupulously up to this point, make sure that it is available to the Committee well in time for the discussion on that part of the Bill. It does not directly relate to this clause.
I shall start with amendments Nos. 14 and 17, and Nos. 15, 16 and 18, which are contingent upon them and which seek, as the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) identified, to limit the number of schools that would have a school improvement partner. I am sympathetic to an argument that might be made about the proportionality of intervention and contact with schools and I will talk about that in more detail later. School improvement partners come within the overall context of the new relationship that we are developing with schools, which is achieving its aim of removing the clutter of bureaucracy in the system while maintaining a suitable level of challenge, alongside the support for schools that I identified when we discussed the first set of amendments on the clause.
SIPs will help all schools to put in place plans for improvement. My hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) made the important point that even in very highly performing schools there can be groups of pupils who are underperforming. SIPs will have an important role in relation to the underperformance of particular groups of pupils within schools. As we also said in the White Paper, SIPs should hold schools to account for how well they support, for example, looked-after children and improve their educational outcomes. Of course, weare most concerned about schools that are underperforming or not highly performing. SIPs will work with those schools to help build capacity and to agree priorities and targets for improvement, but restricting SIPs to coasting or underperforming schools or those that are not highly performing could create problems.
First, we need to be able to respond when a school’s performance is declining, even if it is acceptable or highly performing in absolute terms. That is the point rightly made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove), who pointed out the need for early identification and challenge where schools are drifting into underperformance. Secondly, even in the best schools there may be concern about the performance of particular groups of pupils or about standards in particular subjects. The purpose of this Bill and the next stage of reform is to ensure not only that institutions perform well, but that every individual child in those institutions has the opportunity to fulfil their educational potential. We would be letting down under-achieving pupils if we did not extend the SIP function to all schools.

John Hayes: The right hon. Lady is right to say that there are few schools in which something is not going right. Similarly, there are few schools in which everything is going right, so she is correct to say that even in the best schools there is room for improvement. Before Easter, however, we said that there will not be a limitless supply of improvement partners—not, at least, of the standard we would all expect. In focusing the limited supply where it is most needed, we should take amore considered view as to where improvement is desperately needed.

Jacqui Smith: Proportionality and focus, which I promised to come to shortly, are not what the amendments imply. Instead, they imply that there would be quite a large number of schools without any school improvement partner. There may well be highly performing schools in which certain groups of pupils are under-achieving, and support in identifying and addressing that problem will be important for such schools. Of those secondary pupils who are in the lower two quartiles with respect to added value, some 39 per cent. go to schools that are in the top two quartiles. We would let down many thousands of under-achieving pupils if we did not extend the SIP function to their schools.
There are measures elsewhere in the Bill—in clause 47(3), for example—relating to schools that are a cause for concern, and we have defined what should constitute low-performing schools in both relative and absolute terms. So there is a valuable function for SIPs in all schools which must be carefully focused on the issues and challenges faced by every school. We shall look in more detail at particular types of intervention for underperforming, coasting and failing schools when we reach the relevant part of the Bill.

James Clappison: I am listening to what the right hon. Lady says with some sympathy. What role does she envisage for parents getting in touch with SIPs when they see the problems that she has described—when the school is coasting or when some groups of pupils are not doing as well as they could be?

Jacqui Smith: I am not sure that there is a direct role for the school improvement partner with respect to parents, although it is part of the SIP’s role to make a report to the governing body about the head teacher’s performance. We shall discuss later both the ability of parents to make a complaint to Ofsted when they have concerns about standards, and the requirement for more communication with parents about the progress of their individual children, so that parents may have an impact on overall standards and on their own child’s achievements.
The pupil attainment data, which are now much richer than previously in relation to the achievements of individual children, and are available to the school and the SIP, will enable analysis to take place, together with a focus on actions to address specific issues and challenges. They will ensure that schools make the best use of the additional resources that we are making available for greater personalisation of learning.
The introduction of SIPs to all schools is also about learning from others and sharing good practice. Each SIP will be allocated to a number of schools—maybe even in a number of different local authorities. That will provide an important opportunity for good practice in better-performing schools to be captured and shared in the system.
I said that I was sympathetic to the point on proportionality. I would not expect SIP interactions with schools to be uniform. Our policy is that each SIP should spend five days a year in their relationship with the school—approximately three days in the school and about two outside the school in preparation—but that is an average for all schools. There is sufficient flexibility in the system to allow the days allocated to each school to reflect the needs of the school, and that allocation will not be dictated by my Department. Local authorities will appoint SIPs and allocate them to schools to reflect local context and priorities.
I hope that Opposition Members will feel both convinced by the arguments of the benefits of every school having a SIP and reassured that I acceptthat the scheme will need to be managed proportionately—as we have described it, inversely proportionate to success—and to focus on making the biggest possible difference not just to schools but to individual pupils.

Nick Gibb: The Minister is making an interesting point and concession. Will she be a little more expansive and tell us what the range of days will be? She said that five days will be the average, but how will the range of time reflect the degree of necessity for a SIP in a particular school? Will it be from three days to 10 days, with 10 days being for a school severely in need of advice, or does she not yet have a feel for the range of days that will be recommended?

Jacqui Smith: I was careful to say that the use of SIPs will not be dictated by the Department; it will be for the local authority to determine the deployment of SIPs and to allocate them to schools depending on their priorities. There will of course be different needs for SIP contracts depending on what point a SIP is at in their relationship with the school. At the beginning, we would expect some familiarisation visits, but later perhaps just a quarter or half a day a term would be needed to keep up to date with progress and ensure that the support and challenge offered by the SIP role continued to be available to the school.

Annette Brooke: I refer back to an answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, East concerning academies. Will the Minister confirm that every academy will have a school improvement partner? Who will pay for the SIP for an academy?

Jacqui Smith: As I made clear when we discussed this point, the maintaining authority, which is the Department in the case of an academy, will ensure that academies have school improvement partners. The two academies in areas covered by the first wave of roll-out of SIPs will have SIPs provided for them and funded by the Department.
Amendment No. 19 proposes that school improvement partners be replaced every two years. I share the concern, expressed by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, and implicit in the amendment and in amendment No. 20, that SIPs need to take seriously their role in securing school improvement. Our policy is that accreditation should be reserved for SIPs who are effective. The amendment would put in the Bill detailed requirements that would be inflexible and undesirable, and therefore unsuitable for primary legislation.
I shall outline the two ways in which a SIP’s appointment or allocation to a school could change. The first relates to local accountability for school improvement. The SIP’s role will not alter the statutory responsibilities of a local authority, which will continue to be responsible for standards and levels of attainment in schools. The SIP will work to support that accountability under contract to the school’s maintaining authority and regularly reporting to it. Authorities will need to manage effectively the SIPs who work with their schools, and they will use a range of approaches to that task according to their circumstances and needs. Those approaches will include feedback from schools on such aspects as effectiveness in providing challenge and support, advising the governors and working with the head teacher. Authorities will seek evidence on the impact that advice from the SIP is having on a school’s performance. The discontinuance of a SIP’s deployment to a school could be one of the available management actions if it was clear that the relationship was not having the desired impact.
Secondly, there will be robust national quality assurance to secure high-quality school improvement partners, and engagement with that quality assurance could be one of the requirements under the regulations to which subsection (3) refers. The procedurefor maintaining or withdrawing an individual’s accreditation is a key element of the measures to secure high-quality challenge and support for schools. The continuing accreditation of SIPs will depend on the quality of their performance and on their participation in continuing professional development once they have been accredited.
It might help the Committee if I outline briefly what is involved in the accreditation of a school improvement partner. The current process is run by the National College for School Leadership. Individuals with headship experience or who are link advisors in a local authority can apply to become a SIP. The college takes up two references for applicants who meet the person specification published in the SIP brief. There is then a two-stage process that includes an online assessment of an individual’s ability to interpret a range of school data and use them to identify improvement priorities. That is followed by two days of residential training and face-to-face assessment that not only builds on the use and interpretation of data, but, importantly, tests individuals’ ability to work effectively with a school to effect change.
In light of all of the relevant available information, a person’s accreditation can be removed if their conduct or competence is unsatisfactory. As I suggested, lack of progress in the school with which they work could be an indication of lack of competence. Concerns about a SIP could come from a school, a local authority or a regional co-ordinator of SIPs. After concerns have been expressed there is a fair and transparent process that leads to a decision on whether to remove accreditation, which would be taken by a board made up of representatives of the National College for School Leadership, of national strategies and of the Department.
I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman that procedures for quality assurance, accreditation, and in fact the ability to remove that accreditation where a SIP is clearly failing, are already in place and will play an important part in maintaining that quality assurance. In addition to those measures, our policy on the allocation of school improvement partners includes a requirement on local authorities not to allocate a partner to the same school for more than three years.
In such circumstances it is neither the role of Government nor that of primary legislation to manage education professionals directly. However, I hope that hon. Members are reassured that we recognise, for example, the possibility that a relationship between a SIP and a school might become too cosy. Provision for that has been built into the process.
Amendment No. 20 would add a requirement onthe Government to publish our policies on the appointment of school improvement partners. I am not unsympathetic to the objectives of the amendment, but I do not think that that needs to be in the Bill because policies related to the appointment of SIPs are published already by the Department, or on its behalf. We intend to continue to do that, which will include publishing the eligibility criteria and person specification for becoming an accredited SIP. The condition of grant letter, which we send as part of our arrangements for funding local authorities in order that they can introduce and administer SIPs, includes the main policies in relation to their appointment, such as the proportion that we expect to be head teachers.
Furthermore, there are requirements for information collecting and sharing, and obligations on SIPs to participate in continuing professional development. I am more than happy to send to members of the Committee a copy of the school improvement partner brief to which I have referred. It identifies many of the issues that I have mentioned.
Finally, we have issued to the Committee already a policy statement on the regulation-making powers in the clause which sets out examples of policies that we may want to include in regulations if the need arises. Of course, I am happy to provide further clarification in Committee. On the basis of my arguments, I hope that Opposition Members are reassured that we have developed a proportional yet sufficiently challenging role for SIPs. They will have a new relationship with schools that will remove bureaucracy and clutter and maintain the challenge and support necessary to be confident that all children, whatever school they are in, are given the support and ability to progress and fulfil their potential. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings will withdraw his amendment.

John Hayes: It is good to be back after Easter and to welcome you to the Chair once again, Mr. Chope, buoyed, no doubt, by a healthy intake of buns and eggs and inspired by the risen Christ.
In that spirit I note the Minister’s generosity in acknowledging that she sees sense in some of the amendments. She is absolutely right to stress the importance of the criteria by which school improvement partners will be appointed, assessed and removed if they are not up to the job. I acknowledge her acceptance of arguments advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton about the importance of ensuring that the very best people do the job, that there are proper mechanisms to ensure that they are not coasting and that they can be replaced as and when necessary.
The Minister was less convincing on the numbers of people who will be fit for that purpose. In her appreciation of these matters there seemed to be a slightly complacent view that such people will emerge from the ether and be readily available, well equipped and entirely appropriate to perform the demanding role that she rightly identified. I will not reprise the very good debate that we had before Easter, but I am less certain about that and, given the scarcity of those resources, I am convinced that school improvement partners should be prioritised where they can make the most difference, not only in underperforming schools—we all acknowledge that that is where real effort needs to be made—but in coasting schools.
I made it clear in my intervention that I understand and support the Minister’s argument that there is room for improvement in every school. It would be a very bold governing body or head teacher who said that they could not improve their school. As we know from constituency and broader experience, some aspects could be improved even in the best schools, but that is not where we should prioritise scarce resources. Based on the good analysis that can now be made because of value-added measurement, resources can and should be focused on schools that are palpably coasting and those that are desperately underperforming. The argument for the amendments is based not on principle but on practice; it is about the bread and butter issue of how many people will be found who are up to the job and how their skills should be used to best effect.
I shall draw on one or two bits of evidence to support my argument because the Committee, in its usual demanding fashion, will want more than my rhetoric when deciding whether to support Conservative Members in accepting amendment No. 14. The trial of the school improvement partners goes back some way. As the Minister said, the context for it is the “new relationship with schools” scheme. The trial that took place in 93 schools in eight local authorities between September 2004 and July 2005 is of concern to all members of the Committee in judging this aspect of the Bill.
It is true that the overwhelming majority of schools were positive about SIPs, but a significant number of head teachers—nearly 40 per cent.—said that the scheme increased bureaucracy and made life more difficult. There were also profound concerns that there would be difficulty in recruiting heads with appropriate training, which relates to my earlier argument. Indeed, the National Association of Education Inspectors, Advisers and Consultants went further and warned that SIPs could become a second Ofsted. In other words, by applying them as broadly as the Minister wishes, she may be increasing bureaucracy even though it is hard to defend that on the basis of proven needas it might well be said to do in respect of underperforming or coasting schools.
Recruiting school improvement partners is not plain sailing. There are real worries about getting the right people. Under another group of amendments, we shall debate who SIPs should be. Opposition Members are committed to ensuring that they are of the highest possible quality—a view the Minister shares, I think. It does not make good, practical common sense not to allocate the best people to where they can make the most difference. For that reason, I shall invite the Committee to vote on amendment No. 14—the amendment that I moved just before Easter. Although the Minister has moved some way towards our position on such matters and, in the spirit of Easter, has adopted a generous tone in her response to my comments and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, she is not right about where and how we should introduce such an important feature of the Bill.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 7, Noes 15.

Question accordingly negatived.

John Hayes: I beg to move amendment No. 190, in clause 5, page 3, line 27, after ‘unless' insert
‘he has headteacher experience and'.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 191, in clause 5, page 3, line 30, at end insert
‘and has undergone training in teaching children with special education needs and disability.'.

John Hayes: The lead amendment suggests that the people whom we appoint to perform the important task of school improvement partner should be head teachers, and amendment No. 191 proposes that they should have undergone training in teaching children with special needs. The Committee will know from earlier debates that the most disadvantaged children are at the heart of the Conservatives’ approach to the Bill and to education more generally. Children with special educational needs are among the most disadvantaged children.
Let me deal first with head teachers. Debating the previous group of amendments, I said that it was critical that the people who perform the important role of SIP are of the best possible quality. There are many people who are not head teachers whom we would not want to describe as being anything less than of high quality, but it seems a useful benchmark to suggest that, if a person is to be appointed to a school to make real changes to its organisation, its teaching and learning practices as well as to its management, that person should have been a head teacher.
Perhaps I may plug the school of which I am a governor. The head teacher of John Harrox school in Moulton in my constituency, Mr. David Munro, does a good deal of work advising other head teachers. He is an experienced head and works with other primary heads to help them to improve practice. I am sure that other members of the Committee know of similar examples from their areas of the country. We know that there are already good models of head teachers working with other head teachers in collaborative ventures of one kind or another, to help them to improve practice in their schools. In broadening the number of people who could be involved in that work, we risk undermining schools’ confidence in that provision.
One reason why we want to focus school improvement partners as I described a few moments ago is that we are of the mind that there will not be sufficient head teachers with sufficient time to perform the task. The provision entails former head teachers—they may have retired or moved on, or be doing something else entirely—allocating significant time and energy to the task. I suspect that the Minister will resist the amendments because she knows that if she continues to say that every school should have a partner, there will not be enough head teachers and it will be necessary to broaden the net to draw in people without experience of running a school—people who are not former head teachers. The amendments are consistent with our approach of maintaining that school improvement partners should be of the highest quality. The right people must be appointed to the job. The White Paper makes it clear, at paragraph 2.62 on page 38, that a school improvement partner should be
“a nationally accredited expert, usually a headteacher”.
We are, therefore, not a million miles from the Government on that matter.
It is made clear in the White Paper that school improvement partners are an extension of the idea of collaboration and federation that underpins the Government’s approach to the sharing of good practice. I suspect that the Government are right that it can make a real difference when a failing school federates with another, more successful, school in its area. A school can benefit from that kind of collaboration if there is good knowledge of the local circumstances, if relationships between members of staff, governors and others associated with the school are good, and if there is real knowledge of some of the challenges facing the school. Such collaboration must be rooted in such local expertise. I am very concerned that a school improvement partner who has not been a head teacher and who may not be from the locality may be parachuted into the school without that that sort of understanding or knowledge of local considerations, and perhaps without the “nationally accredited” expertise that a head teacher would typically have.

Sarah Teather: On a point of clarification, does the hon. Gentleman mean that all SIPs should be serving head teachers, or that, as the amendment specifies, they should have head teacher experience? What he is saying seems different from what is in the amendment.

John Hayes: The amendment makes it clear that both are possible. Of course there will be circumstances in which an existing head teacher—as in the example from my area—can play a useful part in supporting the work of another school with challenges that he overcame in his own school. That is why I made the point that it is best for a school improvement partner to come from the same locality, so that he will understand the local challenges and the character of the area and perhaps already have some knowledge of the school. The idea of a serving head teacher travelling to another part of the country and, perhaps, spending many weeks working with a school that has profound difficulties raises all kinds of questions. Where would that head teacher’s priorities lie? Would they lie with the school that he or she had gone to work with, or with the school of which he or she is the serving head teacher? There are issues about that, which is why I am sticking closely to the White Paper. As I have said, the White Paper makes it clear that SIPs are really a development of the idea of local collaboration and federation and good communications showing best practice in a given area.
In the case of former head teachers, there is likely to be a great deal more flexibility. They may have retired or be working part time in rather different professional circumstances and they may be able to move round more freely, allocate more time and play a more dynamic role in the process, without compromising the integrity of this important part of the Bill by diluting the quality of the people involved.

Angela Smith: The amendment is rather prescriptive. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important that a school should be effectively challenged by its school improvement partner and that there should be reasonable flexibility about who should be accredited to do that?

John Hayes: Challenge is important, but it must be based on a good understanding of the issues faced by schools. That is critical. It is important that school improvement partners retain a degree of empiricism—they should be objective; they should be an “honest friend”, as someone described them earlier. Yes, there should be challenge, but it must be in the context of supporting schools’ work in the areas where improvements need to be made. The nature of that challenge will, to some extent, depend upon the scale of the tasks faced by schools and their school improvement partners. None of that, however, alters the essence of my argument that school improvement partners should be of the highest quality. To make the challenge that both the hon. Lady and I seek, school improvement partners must have the respect of those whom they are challenging and advising and with whom they seek to work.

Angela Smith: Does the hon. Gentleman consider that former directors of education, who may have produced extremely efficient and high-quality services in local authorities, may be fitted to the challenge?

John Hayes: As a member of an education committee, I worked with many local authority education officers and met many people of the highest calibre. I do not disparage the expertise of and the good work done by local government officers. Politicians too often go down that road. However, it is important to make the case for school improvement partners as persuasive as possible to schools that may be sceptical. In coasting schools, for example, I suspect there will be a fair amount of doubt that they need a school improvement partner at all. They are coasting because they do not recognise the scale of the challenge that they face. In making the case, the expertise of school improvement partners in running schools and in, as it were, doing the business locally, will be useful tools.
I understand the hon. Lady’s point and I do not disregard it entirely. I am not unsympathetic to the admiration she has for the good work that is done by many education officers in local government. However, I do not think that it is good enough to broaden the net and trawl in a large number of people, not all of whom will be equally competent in persuading the schools of the merit of school improvement partners. If we are going to limit who can become a SIP, we should limit it to head teachers—people with experience that is highly relevant to the work that they are to do in and with the school.
It is worth talking about, in the pilot, the successful school improvement partnership between George Salter high school and Shireland language college, which is highlighted in the White Paper. Performance at George Salter high school in Sandwell was improved when Mr. Mark Grundy, the head teacher at Shireland—I hasten to add that I do not know him—took over the strategic running of both schools and devised a recovery plan for George Salter. However, the Bill does not stipulate that school improvement partners must have real-life experience of running schools. There is a great danger that if we do not specify who SIPs should be, we will not get the right people, and will not persuade schools that this part of the Bill is warranted or that the work that such people do is desirable.
According to TheTimes Educational Supplement of 21 December 2005, heads who have applied to become school improvement partners have complained about the complex application process. I understand that it includes role-play tests and a data evaluation examination that must be completed within 35 hours of opening the envelope. Will the Minister comment on that? We must get the right people, and the criteria by which we test, appoint and remove them should be rigorous, but if we are going to ask both serving and former head teachers to be involved, we must make the process by which they become engaged as clear and straightforward as possible. We do not want to add bureaucracy where there is already too much, particularly given that the point is made in the White Paper that the Government’s “new relationship with schools” policy is
“designed to reduce bureaucracy and streamline working arrangements”,
so as to release more energy to focus on local priorities. 
Our doubts about the Government’s position are not doubts in principle. There is a case for sharing good practice with underperforming or coasting schools in which improvement is urgently needed. We are committed to the idea that the people involved in that should be the best possible people and that they should be able to perform their function by earning the respect of the schools that they work with. That will in part depend on their real-life practical experience, and I am therefore convinced that it is desirable that they have run schools themselves as head teachers.
As more children with special needs are educated in mainstream schools, the need to ensure that teachers have appropriate training and advice on how to meet their needs is increasing. In this Committee, we have made a case for the role of special schools. I am a staunch advocate of their virtues for children with all sorts of special needs, but I acknowledge that many children who are integrated into mainstream schools do well there. There is a good deal of good practice in integrating children in mainstream schools where that is the best place for them. We believe that such matters should be determined by the choice of parents and the needs of children. The best educational opportunities for children should be the driver of policy in that respect.
However, if that is to be how we move forward, it is vital that school improvement partners have a good understanding of the requirements of children with special educational needs. Conservative Members will not hesitate to advocate the case for special needs children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton has done throughout his tenure of his current post, as I did when I held that post, and as I continue to do in my current role. We should not allow children with special educational needs to play second fiddle either in our consideration of the Bill or more widely. SIPs should be well equipped to deal with the needs of those children and amendment No. 191 would make that a requirement of the Bill.
The fastest growing area of special needs is children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Such children present real challenges to schools and head teachers and will present significant challenges to SIPs. EBD children bring with them all kinds of problems, so it is important that SIPs are well equipped to deal with them. There are worries within the profession that teachers and heads are not necessarily receiving adequate training to deal with EBD children or with children with special educational needs more generally. There are real doubts about the level of expertise and therefore about the way that some of those children are being handled in mainstream schools.
Amendment No. 191 would require school improvement partners to have adequate training. No doubt, the Minister will tell us why she thinks that they should not be required to have such training and set out clearly how she sees the alternative working out. If SIPs are not to be trained in this area, we want to be absolutely certain that she has a plan B—another way of dealing with the needs of those children in underperforming schools.

Nadine Dorries: Does my hon. Friend agree that the number of children with emotional and behavioural difficulties and special needs is increasing rapidly? That is not simply because we can now detect those problems at an earlier stage; there are other reasons too. The amendment is therefore essential. The lack of mention of children with special educational needs in both the White Paper and the Bill is worrying.

John Hayes: I mentioned that the number of statemented children with emotional and behavioural difficulties has risen sharply. Of course that is happening in the context of a growing understanding of special educational needs and a recognition of such through the statementing process. I still have real worries that the statementing process is esoteric and bureaucratic and that many children are not statemented quickly enough, with the result that we do not understand their particular educational needs as clearly as we might. The parents of such children often find the system confusing and are bamboozled by the bureaucracy confronting them. Despite that, it is certainly true that more children’s needs are being identified more clearly than was done in the past, which makes my call for proper competence, real understanding and adequate training for those involved in advising on the education of those children all the more important.
As I said, it would be enlightening to know whether the Minister disagrees. I feel sure that she must share my concerns because I remember debating the issues with her at greater length on a previous occasion. If we are to get the sort of education that we all want for the most disadvantaged children, we must set the bar as high as possible for those who educate them and those who work with the schools where they are educated. That seems a reasonable case, which I am sure that the Minister will either counter with a palatable and persuasive alternative, or accept by embracing our amendments. Let us have head teachers and people who are properly trained in dealing with children with special educational needs.

Sarah Teather: I am sympathetic to the arguments made for amendment No. 190. It is particularly important that we treat senior management within education as a distinct profession that requires skills distinct from teaching throughout the school and from other forms of senior management, although it draws on both of those types of experience. I will listen carefully to the words that the Minister uses to explain why she does not support the amendment.
I am also sympathetic to the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith) that there are senior local education advisors who may have particular expertise, but in many cases those people will have had senior education management experience. That is where my concern about the amendment’s prescription lies. It is vital that the people in question have experience of senior education management, but that does not necessarily mean that they must have been serving head teachers; they may have been deputy heads, for example, or had another senior management role in a large school that has given them overall expertise.
On amendment No. 191, I suspect that the training requirements of SIPs will not be confined to special educational needs. They will need continuing professional development in discipline and changes in child protection law. I foresee SIPs from rural Hertfordshire finding it difficult to understand the problems faced by a school in my constituency, where tribal wars from Somalia continue in the playground. The importance of continuing professional development is raised in point 3 of the policy statement that has been issued by the Government with the illustrative regulations. If the Minister puts on record that such issues will be dealt with under continuing professional development, I will be quite happy with that reassurance. If not, wider issues will need to be addressed, not just those relating to special educational needs.

Nick Gibb: I rise in support of my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings, who so ably moved the amendment, to make not the same points but one or two additional points. As he said, the amendments relate to the quality and qualifications of the people who are to become school improvement partners. I note from the statement of policy on clause 5, to which the hon. Member for Brent, East referred and which the Minister has helpfully circulated to members of the Committee, that the Government have considered the point. At paragraph 3 it states:
“SIPs will be drawn from serving head teachers, former head teachers and local authority advisors.”
That statement is welcome, except the part about local authority advisors, to which the hon. Lady also referred. I am not sure how well local authority advisors are regarded by head teachers, but I suspect that a head is likely to take the advice of a fellow head more seriously than that of an advisor who has never worked in a school or who has been the head of a school only for a very short time before moving into local authority administration.
Paragraph 4 of the note provided by the Minister states:
“We have not put these requirements into primary legislation because we want to retain flexibility over the development and application of these policies in the light of working with local authorities on their implementation of the SIP programme.”
That is a pity, because there is a distinct likelihood that unless the requirements are explicitly set out in the Bill, there will be a flight from quality as local authorities struggle to find head teachers or former head teachers who are willing to take on the task, as my hon. Friend has said.
Paragraph 3.1 of the regulatory impact assessment says that
“SIPs should be nationally accredited”
and that
“three quarters of an authority’s secondary SIPs should have head teacher experience.”
Why three quarters, and why only secondary schools’ school improvement partners? Surely the same should apply to primary schools’ SIPs as well.
I was also interested by paragraph 3.2 on page 54:
“To enable Ministers to enforce the implementation of the SIP function in accordance with their policies, if necessary”—
that is the purpose of the legislation—
“conditions on SIP funding for local authorities enable the Department to recover or withhold funding but as it is a contribution to costs this would provide insufficient leverage over an authority determined not to implement SIPs in accordance with ministerial policies or not to appoint themat all.”
I quote that paragraph because the Minister often criticises me for being over-prescriptive. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough made the same point earlier today to my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings. I have been criticised for being over-prescriptive for wanting synthetic phonics to be used in the teaching of reading, or more setting in the classroom, yet the regulatory impact assessment is littered with hundreds of paragraphs on prescription—how the Government can enforce their policy on this or that body. The Conservative approach is all about exhortation.

Jacqui Smith: Does the hon. Gentleman not understand that the point of a regulatory impact assessment is to outline why legislation is the most appropriate route in particular circumstances? Of course it proposes a legislative route. Otherwise, the Bill would not be justified.

Nick Gibb: In that case, I extend the sentence by saying that the regulatory impact assessment is littered with such paragraphs and the Bill is littered with extremely prescriptive provisions. It is rich for the Minister to accuse the Conservative party of being prescriptive.

Annette Brooke: It seems that the hon. Gentleman is attempting to make the Bill even more prescriptive. Does he agree that some advisers, directors of education, and head teachers—although not all of them—are inspirational? Do we not want the very best for our schools?

Nick Gibb: Of course we want the very best. It is up to policy-makers to assess how to achieve the best school improvement partners given the limited resources available to us as a country. Amendment No. 191 seeks to do that.
Good education policy can often be implemented by exhortation and dissemination of best practice. Only on issues of major importance—such as phonics, for example—should it be necessary to change the national curriculum by regulation. The Government’s approach is to pile on initiative after initiative that may or may not contribute in some minor way to raising standards, but that will certainly impose time-consuming activities on teachers and head teachers. That is the point that I am trying to make. There is a distinction between important measures that will deliver higher standards and those measures that are burdensome to teachers and head teachers.

Angela Smith: There have been two references to the need to disseminate best practice and the view that head teachers are probably one of the best ways to do that. How does that square with the Conservative party’s policy during the last election of abolishing the National College for School Leadership? Is the hon. Gentleman telling us that that policy has changed?

Nick Gibb: All our policies are up for review, of course, at the beginning of a new Parliament. We need to make sure that things such as the National College for School Leadership are effective. If they are not, they must be either abolished or reformed. We will consider that in the coming months.
I should like to deal briefly with amendment No. 191, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings said, would add the requirement that school improvement partners should also have training in teaching children with special educational needs and disabilities. My hon. Friend focused on children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. Such matters will be important for SIPs for mainstream schools with pupils with special needs,Â and SIPs for special schools. There will be little point having a school improvement partner for a special school if he or she lacks the specialised training that a teacher or head teacher at such a school has had—or the experience required for such people to be effective.
I recently spoke to a head teacher of an excellent special school catering for children with severe learning difficulties. He explained how specialised the training of his teachers is and needs to be using the example of a child who not only has severe learning difficulties, but is deaf and blind. He said that, in such circumstances, someone is needed to help the child to develop her faculties. For example, in a swimming lesson, the teacher will let the child hold her swimming costume, so that she associates it with swimming. Once this knowledge has been established in her mind, after a few weeks, instead of giving her the full costume, the teacher will give her a small piece of the same material. After a few more weeks, she will be given a shaped piece of material attached to a card. In time, the shape will be associated in her mind with swimming. The child’s intellect is being developed and she is beginning the process of learning to read. That is one small example of the specialised pedagogy involved in teaching at a special school for those with severe learning difficulties.
A school improvement partner for a special school should have such specialised training and experience. A SIP for a mainstream school with a special needs unit should also have some degree of training in the area of special education. The Special Education Consortium, which is keen on amendment No. 191, says:
“School improvement partners will need training and preparation for this role and this is clearly envisaged, in clause 5, by the requirement for them to be accredited...However, the role of school improvement partners in respect of the quality of provision made by schools for disabled pupils and pupils with special educational needs is problematic. This is largely because the quality of provision in schools is itself variable. Head teachers recruited as school improvement partners are going to bring that variable expertise to the school improvement role...The dearth of expertise in schools in these particular respects makes training on SEN and disability crucial for anyone becoming a school improvement partner....SEC believes that this amendment is essential to ensuring that school improvement partners are equipped to support the improvement of the quality of provision for disabled pupils and pupils with special educational needs.”
Amendments Nos. 190 and 191 are important and will help to ensure that SIPs do not just become tick-box encumbrances, but result in some real value added to the schools concerned.

Anne Snelgrove: May I welcome you back after the Easter recess, Mr. Chope?
The amendments demonstrate that the Conservative vision for SIPs is much narrower than the vision reflected in the Bill. Our vision is much wider because we want all schools to have SIPs, including those that are successful or perhaps only superficially successful. In a speech on 13 April, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out the new interventions intended for failing schools. SIPs are not part of those interventions. They are to act as constant professional, critical friends to schools, and are not merely to be parachuted in when schools are underperforming or coasting. They are relevant to all maintained schools, not only the failing ones. It is therefore relevant to involve a wider group of people in the SIPs initiative than the narrow group envisaged by the Conservatives.
My memory goes back to when head teacher appraisal was introduced in the early 1990s. It was, rightly, introduced rapidly, but sufficient experts were not available and people had to be trained quickly. Some people involved in the scheme were advisers and some came from outside the head teacher profession, but despite the fact that not everyone involved had experience of being a head teacher, the scheme was, and is, a great success. I do not see that there will be any difference with the people who will work as SIPs.
Schools that have good leaders do not necessarily need identikit good leaders from other schools to be their school improvement partners. They may need different types of professionals—perhaps those who have experience of working with certain categories of children or in the particular areas that may not be improving with the rest of the school. It may not be a question of leadership, but a matter of drilling down and considering the areas that may need to be improved.
We are considering a more complex issue than the small number of schools that are either failing or coasting. We need a group of professionals, not just one type of professional, to help schools. As was mentioned earlier, the professionals must be accredited by the National College for School Leadership, and it is that, not whether they have head teacher experience, that should be the test.

John Hayes: The hon. Lady, as ever, is making a persuasive argument, but does she not accept the view that people are more likely to take advice from their peers? Can the hon. Lady think of a single profession in which people would not be most likely to take advice from those who had done their job? It is true of MPs, is it not? If I needed advice on how I could do my job better, I would be more likely to speak to someone who had done the job than to someone who had not.

Anne Snelgrove: The hon. Gentleman is correct: people do like to seek information and advice from their peers. However, I have noticed that my constituents are very free with their opinions and I cannot seem to stop them. [Laughter.] There are a number of people besides head teachers whom head teachers consider to be their peers—for example, the professional group of educators; their deputy head colleagues; deputy head teachers in other schools; and those whom they consider to be good advisers and inspectors.
The peer group of head teachers and deputy head teachers includes good professionals, but we all know that when we visit schools, the head teachers sometimes make comments about their head teacher and adviser colleagues to which we have to close our ears, whereas they are full of praise for other colleagues. The peer group is not confined narrowly to head teachers. It comprises many different people, including up-and-coming deputy head teachers, whom everyone within a group of schools knows will be the next head teachers. Possibly, they are more inspirational leaders than many of the head teachers in that group of schools. We must be very careful about what we consider to be the peer group.
If I heard him correctly, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton mentioned advisers who have never worked in a school. I do not know many advisers—in fact, I do not know any—who have never worked in schools. However, I do recall that when the Conservative Government quite rightly introduced the inspection regime, it was mandatory for each group to include an inspector drawn from industry—someone who had no prior experience of a school. That was very useful, but it was useful within a group of inspectors who made a collective judgment on how a school was doing. I can see reasons for involving advisors from outside education, and ways of doing it, but I do not think that such an advisor would be the sole person to be involved in school improvement. In fact, I should be very surprised if such a person were to get through the training given by the National College for School Leadership.
Amendment No. 191 is largely redundant, because I do not know of any initial teacher training that does not include an element of training in special needs. My own certainly did, and I know that many colleges provide that training now. I should be very surprised to learn otherwise. In addition, a huge amount of training in special needs has been provided for teachers in the past 10 to 15 years, particularly with the move to include more young people with special needs in mainstream schools and colleges. People either agree with that or they do not, and I do not intend to rehearse the arguments here, but it is of course up to the National College for School Leadership to ensure that further training, if necessary, is available and is part of the qualification for school improvement partners.

John Hayes: The hon. Lady mentioned the special needs training that many teachers have enjoyed—her phrase “an element of training in special needs” was an interesting one—and I wonder if she agrees with the large number of teachers who feel that many children who have been integrated into the mainstream should not be there. She will recall last year’s survey that found that a significant number of teachers and head teachers thought that about a quarter of the children who have been integrated into the mainstream should be in special schools.

Anne Snelgrove: On my remark about an element of training, of course if a teacher is training as a general primary school teacher or is doing subject-specific training for secondary school it would not be expected that the whole training programme would be about special needs. I do not know the survey that the hon. Gentleman mentions, but my feeling is that we need to consider a balance of what is right for the child and what is right for the school. That is how we should proceed. There are always issues to be considered about integration and getting children into the mainstream. I also feel that we have in the past held many children with special needs back by putting them and keeping them in special schools when they could move faster and further in mainstream schools.
Amendments Nos. 191 and 190 are narrow and do not express the breadth of provision that is in the Bill. That is why I shall not support them.

Jacqui Smith: We have had a good discussion about school improvement partners. Amendment No. 190 would, as we have heard, impose restrictions on who could be a school improvement partner by requiring that the individual concerned should have head teacher experience. I agree that a central feature of the school improvement partner programme should be the involvement of significant numbers of people with head teacher experience. That is already established, and we have been clear about it since January 2004.Of course, as the hon. Member for South Hollandand The Deepings identified, we reiterated that commitment in the schools White Paper.
The Committee may be interested to know that 70 per cent. of secondary school improvement partners deployed in the first wave have head teacher experience, and that in the primary phase local authorities already use significant numbers of people with head teacher experience. A recent advertisement for primary school improvement partner accreditation attracted 2,000 applications, and 85 per cent. of those were from people with head teacher experience.
However, some important points have been made, largely by my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), to show that we should also recognise that some individuals who have not been head teachers may have important expertise and experience to offer. That case was made eloquently by my hon. Friends the Members for South Swindon and for Sheffield, Hillsborough. For example, those individuals could include current or ex-school improvement advisors. It would be inappropriate and the system would lose out if we effectively, in passing the amendment, outlawed those people from becoming school improvement partners and therefore from contributing further to school improvement.

Mary Creagh: Has my right hon. Friend analysed the potential impact of the amendments, were they to be made, in opening the Government to challenges under the Human Rights Act 1998 or sex discrimination laws, given that fewer women are likely to become head teachers, particularly at secondary level? Indirectly, the amendments could be discriminatory.

Jacqui Smith: I have to admit to my hon. Friend that I have not made any analysis under human rights or sex discrimination legislation, but she makes an important point—as have other colleagues—about the impact of making legislation on the nature of school improvement partners over-restrictive.
We have been clear about the significant contribution that we expect those with head teacher experience to make, not least because the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings is right—head teachers might be more likely to accept that challenge and support from other head teachers. I note as well—not necessarily warmly—that it was a Conservative Government who introduced lay Ofsted inspectors, and, I understand, lay inspectors into the police force. So his argument does not stack up in the way in which he spelt it out.
The amendment confronts the question whether, despite the commitment to have large numbers of people with head teacher experience, we want to outlaw people who do not, from contributing to school improvement. Already, many such individuals are serving successfully as school improvement partners in our schools. To replace those existing SIPs with head teachers and former head teachers would require wholesale change, and in many ways it would be rash to lose the expertise of all of those people.
I reassure hon. Members, however, that we have introduced a national system of accreditation, that I outlined when I responded to the previous group of amendments, that underpins the appointment of SIPs, and, indeed, we have included that requirement in the Bill. I was slightly surprised that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings described as bureaucracy what I think of as a rigorous accreditation process. I make no excuse for the fact that we require individuals to pass the online assessment and meet the person specification, and then to go on to be trained and assessed for accreditation.
In a moment I shall respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Brent, East who identified—rightly—the need for not only rigorous accreditation, but continuing professional development training in some areas. Of course, we are prepared to insist, where necessary, on head teacher involvement in the school improvement partner programme by, for example, making such involvement a condition of funding support. We would do that to help to achieve, as I have said, the policy that we have set out whereby 75 per cent. of secondary SIPs deployed should have secondary head teacher experience.
Hon. Members have referred to the policy statement that accompanies clause 5 in which I spelt out the reserve powers for making regulations which would, if necessary, be the place in which to legislate for more detailed requirements in relation to the appointment of school improvement partners. On that basis, I shall resist amendment No. 190.
There are technical problems with amendment No. 191. As drafted, it would add to subsection (2)(b) the requirement that a person should be trained in the teaching of
“children with special education needs and disability.”
However, that provision relates to the person authorised by the Secretary of State to accredit individuals to be school improvement partners, not to the partners themselves, so technically the amendment does not achieve the aim set out by Opposition Members.
However, I shall address the intention behind the amendment, which was meant to refer to the people being accredited as school improvement partners. I shall mention, first, the organisation that accredits the school improvement partners, secondly, the nature of the SIP role in relation to the children, and, thirdly, our thinking on the role of SIPs in relation to special schools—a matter to which the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton referred. The initial training, development, assessment and accreditation of school improvement partners is undertaken by the National College for School Leadership, whose future, at least under the present Government, is secure.
On the points made by the hon. Member for Brent, East on how SIPs are trained, school improvement partners do not focus solely on the academic achievement of the successful or the best. The training and accreditation of SIPs focuses on data analyses of the performance of groups of pupils in schools, in particular on identifying inequitable outcomes that might occur in the school, the factors that contribute to them, and the action that the school should take. That is supplemented by detailed guidance on how the school improvement partnership focuses with the school on issues that might affect vulnerable or disadvantaged groups of pupils—the sort of issues rightly identified by the hon. Lady. I should be happy to supply members of the Committee with the guidance, to identify the scope and the depth of the training.
The guidance includes advice that SIPs should consider in relation to special educational needs, including the effectiveness of systems in the school to identify pupils with barriers to learning; discriminating well between those with learning and behavioural difficulties; whether systems can be used to design appropriate curriculum and pastoral support, monitoring success; responding to changing needs; and focusing on whether there are effective links with other support agencies, to ensure that integrated support structures, which are often so important for children with special educational needs, are in place for pupils with additional needs in the school.

Annette Brooke: Has the guidance been drawn up in association with some of the main organisations such as the National Autistic Society, which wants a special teacher with a full brief on autism in every school?

Jacqui Smith: I cannot give the hon. Lady a commitment that the guidance, which is about the training of school improvement partners, has been drawn up with the National Autistic Society, but the Department has done considerable work with the society about the special educational needs training that my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon mentioned and how we can address such needs in schools.
The guidance is supplemented by a range of questions supplied to SIPs, specifically whether there are effective systems to identify pupils with additional needs and to monitor how well those needs are being addressed. SIPs will therefore be required to identify underperformance of potentially vulnerable groups and be equipped to deal with them. They will raise issues of concern and probe with the head teacher their response to them and the priorities for action.
As well as considering academic attainment, SIPs will also consider any over-representation of certain types of pupils in a school’s exclusion or absence data. There are worries about the representation of children with special educational needs in exclusions, and about the number of exclusions. The SIP will be armed with that information on the school and trained to investigate the matter.
The training and professional development of SIPs does not stop with the initial session provided for accreditation. SIPs will take part in four days of professional development a year, provided in part by the national strategies and in part by the local authorities deploying SIPs. One of the important elements of that training will relate to the analysis of the school’s self-evaluation. That is a key starting point for the school improvement partner in the process of offering challenge and support to the school.
There are specific special educational needs sections in the school self-evaluation form. I can assure the Committee that the SEN self-evaluation framework will form part of the SIPs’ continuing professional development. The thrust of all the professional development for SIPs, both initial and continuing, will be to stimulate the improvements that each school needs. In many schools those improvements include raising the attainment of pupils with special educational needs. That does not mean that every SIP needs the same training. I would argue against including the requirement in the legislation, both for technical reasons and because of the reassurance that I have been able to provide about the nature of the training—initial and ongoing.
Let me say something about the identification and use of school improvement partners for special schools, which the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton raised. He is right to say that questions need to be answered about specific elements of work with special schools, and that they are worthy of careful consideration. That is why we are conducting a trial of SIPs for special schools in 26 schools under seven local authorities. That will enable us to consider issues such as how we use and interpret data on the achievement of the pupils, what additional training and development might be needed for the accreditation of SIPs for special schools, and what the most appropriate background of the SIPs should be if they are to be effective in and credible to the sector. The trial is being evaluated independently and I hope to be in a position to make decisions on national roll out, informed by the results of that evaluation, later in the summer.
I hope that, in light of the points that I have made, hon. Members will recognise that our aim in introducing SIPs is to strengthen our commitment to ensuring successful outcomes for all pupils, irrespective of their special needs or disabilities, and that we are putting in place both the accreditation and the initial and continuing professional development necessary to achieve that aim. On the basis of those arguments, and of the technical deficiency of the second amendment, I hope that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

John Hayes: I am extremely grateful for the Minister’s comprehensive response to the amendments. Let us review where we are in terms of the sort of people who we hope will become SIPs. There seems to be agreement across the Committee that the role is vital and that SIPs should be people of wide experience and the highest quality. There is no disagreement about the need to ensure that schools welcome them as such and understand the role that they can play in their improvement.
As I said at the outset, I do not think that there is much debate about the principle. There are, however, concerns about the practice. We are concerned about the recruitment of SIPs. The Minister was critical of my criticism of the bureaucratic nature of the process. I referred only to comments that have been made independently by those who have been part of the trial process. The test of a recruitment process is that it is effective, not that it is burdensome. It does not have to be long, drawn out and complex to be effective. We are talking about attracting the right people and then assessing their suitability to do the job. I was simply warning the Minister that if she does not get that right, she will not achieve her objective. However, I understand her acknowledgement that the matter needs to be taken into account, so there is little disagreement between us on that.
Indeed, there seems to be less and less disagreement about who will become SIPs. In the early days, it was not clear that there was to be much of a limit on who might become one. As we have moved on, we have gathered that most SIPs will be head teachers. Indeed, the regulatory impact assessment says:
“SIPs should be nationally accredited and...three quarters of an authority’s secondary SIPs should have head teacher experience.”
The Minister went further by telling us that 85 per cent. of those people who expressed an interest in becoming a SIP are head teachers.
There is an assurance that the vast bulk of people involved in this process will be head teachers. Moreover, there is a growing consensus on the Committee that they should have relevant local expertise. That is not to say that they will necessarily be drawn from the locality, but the hon. Member for Brent, East made a sensible point that having some understanding and appreciation of the local circumstances will be critical not just to them doing their job but to their being accepted as the critical friend that we all hope they might be. It would be entirely inappropriate to bring in someone who had not dealt with the challenges of a very rural or a very urban area and expect them to persuade head teachers and other senior managers in the school that they could be a valuable and valued critical friend.

Jacqui Smith: I do not want to disrupt the consensus that has broken out, at least in the early part of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, but although I agree with him about the need to understand the local context in which a school works, there may be some benefits in local authorities employing SIPs who come from other areas. A SIP will not always work with a local school.

John Hayes: Indeed, the balance is critical. It might well be appropriate to bring in someone who was not immediately associated with the school, or even associated by implication with the school, but who had experience of dealing with similar challenges in a different place. It would be much harder to persuade a school to accept the advice of someone who had done very good work, but in a very different kind of environment. That is the balance about which I discern the Minister shares my concern.
The comment made by the hon. Member for Brent, East about her locality—we can all make similar comments about our own localities—is important in terms of the kind of work that the SIP is likely to do on the ground in a particular school. I acknowledge what the Minister said about that. Although in a response to an earlier intervention I mentioned that I accepted that good people are involved in LEAs who bring much skill to bear, some LEAs are merely coasting. There are not just coasting schools; sometimes there are coasting authorities. Sometimes schools are coasting because necessary action has not been taken by education officers. In acknowledging that there are good people in all kinds of places who might become SIPs, we must be careful that we do not perpetuate complacency by introducing people into the process who will not offer the kind of challenge that the Minister mentioned.
With the assurances that the Minister offered in respect of her determination to ensure quality and with the absolute certainty that we will continue to press her to ensure that that quality is delivered in practice, we can buy her arguments on amendment No. 190. However, I am less persuaded by her arguments on amendment No. 191. Obviously I accept her technical point because she has an army of civil servants behind her about whom I can only dream. That dream is likely in a few short years to become a reality. When the Minister is on the Opposition Benches, as she will be when that happens, or, indeed, doing another job—she may return to the classroom; who knows?—she will perhaps understand. However, I still think it is important that, to illustrate the Committee’s absolute commitment to the interests of children with special needs, we should go a little further with the amendment.
It is of course true, as the hon. Member for South Swindon revealingly said, that teachers receive some training in how to deal with children with special needs. She said that “an element” of their training involved children with special needs. I do not share her instinct about those children whose progress has been inhibited by being in special schools. She said that they would have moved “faster and further” in the mainstream, but I tend to take the view of the majority of heads and teachers who are not in this place but doing the job, and who suggested, in the survey that she said she did not know about, that as many as 25,000 children in mainstream schools in England and Wales would be better off in special schools.
The survey, which was published in The Times Educational Supplement, was of a very large number of schools. More than 500 classroom teachers and more than 200 head teachers of mainstream schools took part, so it was not a slight investigation. I am inclined to think that many of the children who have been integrated could have moved faster and further had they had the kind of dedicated attention that they would have received in special schools. I take a different view from the hon. Lady, but perhaps she has not quite broken out of the old Warnock orthodoxy that permeated thinking and distorted policy for so long.

Anne Snelgrove: I said that some of the children in special schools were held back, and in my experience that is true. I am not talking about children with severe learning difficulties, but about some of those who attended schools such as schools for the deaf or the blind. The education of our very own right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) was blighted by going to a school that recognised only his disability, not his abilities. That is how I would put it—we need schools that recognise abilities, not disabilities.

John Hayes: Of course it is true—and the amendment does not mean that I demur from the point—that many children integrated into mainstream schools do extremely well. We should celebrate their progress and revere the work of the teachers who educate them. Indeed, where the particular needs of such children can be met without compromise to their educational opportunity or to the life of the school and the quality of the work done there more generally, integration should happen. If it is best for them and it is what their parents want, children should be integrated—we are at one on that. However, when more than 200 head teachers and more than 500 classroom teachers say that they reckon that one in four of the children integrated into their schools should not have been integrated, we must take that seriously, must we not? I wonder whether the hon. Member for Brent, East takes it seriously.

Sarah Teather: I do indeed. The hon. Gentleman made some interesting points in the early part of his speech about the need for training for teachers. I accept his point that many teachers feel that their training is not adequate for them to deal with all the challenges that are presented to them, but his point is surely about the training of teachers, not the training of SIPs. As the Minister said, the training for SIPs concerns identifying whether certain groups of children are being failed by the system. Providing training to the school is an entirely different question.

John Hayes: The hon. Lady is right. They are different, but they are both important. [Interruption.]

Christopher Chope: Order. We cannot talk through the siren sound because Hansard will not be able to report what is going on.

John Hayes: As the siren sounds, I shall become quieter. Many members on the Benches opposite would rather hear the siren than hear me. [Hon. Members: “No!”] My modesty is legendary, as you know, Mr. Chope. I am the siren voice for the army of children for whom we all seek to do our best.
The hon. Member for Brent, East is right to say that the two things are different, but both are important. The training of teachers to deal with special needs children is of course critical. I tell her that when I trained as a teacher, which was not a million years ago—there are many still teaching who trained at the same time as me—I do not remember a single element of my training that related to children with special educational needs. In the schools where I did my teaching practice I was given no additional support or training in respect of such children.

Anne Snelgrove: Things have moved on. I do not know when the hon. Gentleman trained—it must have been several decades ago. I reassure him that there is now such training.

John Hayes: I trained in the early 1980s. There will be many teachers still teaching who trained then and before. I freely acknowledge that many of them will have had in-service training that will have affected their abilities and skills in that regard. Things have indeed moved on, but it would be monstrous to imagine a circumstance in which a head teacher, without the specialist skills and experience that my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton identified in his short example of special education, were to become the school improvement partner for a special school. I do not think that that is likely to happen, but it would be monstrous if it did. The chances of persuading the senior management team in the special school that that person was able to offer the sort of advice needed to improve the school’s standards would be very slim indeed.
When I spoke initially I made a case not about special schools but about mainstream schools. If such circumstances would be bad in mainstream schools, they are likely to be altogether worse in the kind of special schools that my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton mentioned. The Minister responded by saying that guidance supports identification, curriculum support, pastoral support, monitoring, assessment, relationships with support structures and a variety of other things. I welcome those assurances; it is clear that they are indicative of an understanding of the need to ensure that such matters are at the heart of what SIPs do and of the self-assessment process, which was also mentioned in our short debate.
It is critical that the matter is added to the Bill, perhaps in a technically amended form. That would send a message from the House and the Committee that we understand the critical role of teachers in helping children who are disadvantaged by special needs to achieve their educational potential. To do less would be to undersell the importance of the matter. I mention again children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, who lie at the heart of the “Every Child Matters” agenda that the Government have put at the centre of their considerations in integrating the work of various governmental and non-governmental agencies to help children who face the challenges about which we have spoken.
Although I acknowledge that the Minister has indicated that she takes this matter seriously, and although I understand that many of the people involved in becoming SIPs may have an appreciation and experience of special educational needs, I believe that it is critical for us to highlight such training, in the strongest possible terms, as being a central requirement of what we expect of SIPs working in mainstream schools with special needs children or in special schools. For that reason, we shall press amendment No. 191 to a vote, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the lead amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Amendment proposed: No. 191, in clause 5, page 3, line 30, at end insert
‘and has undergone training in teaching children with special education needs and disability.'.—[Mr. Hayes.]

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 7, Noes 16.

Question accordingly negatived.

Edward Leigh: I beg to move amendment No. 347, in clause 5, page 3, line 30, at end insert—
‘(2A) In the case of a religious school of any denomination or religion, the person employed or engaged by a local education authority under the provisions of this section must be of the same denomination or religion as the school to which he is appointed.'.
The amendment is probing, but covers an important subject. I tabled it to give the Minister an opportunity to reassure those concerned about faith schools that school improvement partners will not interfere with or affect the ethos of those schools. I have been in touch with the head teacher at Our Lady of Victory school, the primary school that one of my children attends, and Paul Barber of the Catholic Education Service. This is a useful opportunity for the Minister to reassure the Committee. The Catholic Education Service is extremely concerned about the possible impact of SIPs on the ethos of its schools. The issue, therefore, is important.
Denominational schools are voluntary of course, and the whole point of them is that the governing body should have the final say. That is particularly important for the protection of the ethos of those schools. At the moment, a committee of the governing body, appointed by the school, carries out the school appraisals and appoints an external adviser. Various mechanisms ensure that those external advisers are properly qualified. For instance, the committee can check a person’s expertise with the Cambridge Education Associates.
A missive has come from the Department saying that those external advisers, who are appointed by the schools and usually are—I would imagine—of the same denomination as the schools, will be replaced by SIPs. I would be grateful if the Minister could make it clear that there is no question of the SIPs having a role in changing the ethos of faith schools, and, indeed, that local education authorities will consult the governing bodies of faith schools to ensure that any SIPs appointed understand the ethos and will work with the school.
Generally faith schools have a very good record, academically and in every other way. Many are over-subscribed, particularly in the London area, but, presumably, some underperform academically. There might therefore be a role for what used to be an external adviser and will now be a school improvement partner to come in and give advice to a school on how to improve its academic performance, which may have nothing to do with its faith ethos.
However, we would not want these people to come in and change the ethos. The Minister may say that that is unlikely, but it is a well known fact that there are many in this House and in the education world who are fiercely opposed even to the existence of faith schools. That is not the Minister’s position and when she responds to the debate she will no doubt make clear her commitment to these schools and that of the Prime Minister, who sent his children to a faith school. I am sure the Minister will say that the Government fully support the schools, want them to expand, and that nothing concerning SIPs will affect the ethos of the schools. However, we need a pretty strong reassurance from her in that respect, because her remarks will be looked at very carefully in the world of faith schools.
I do not suggest that the words in this probing amendment are correct, as I tabled it in an attempt to be reasonable and constructive. It would probably be unreasonable to insist that a school improvement partner was of the same denomination as the school, although when Catholic schools were inspected in the past, the inspectors, too, were usually Catholic, but that was changed some years ago. I may table an amendment to enable us to discuss the matter.
Many people involved with faith schools are concerned about what they perceive to be a gradual attack on their ethos, worried that it may be the thin end of the wedge. How can we ensure that they are reassured? I suggested that SIPs should generally be of the same denomination as the school. For example, in a typical education authority there might be a number of Anglican or Catholic schools and it would not be impossible to find a school improvement partner who was a Catholic or an Anglican, supported the ethos of faith schools and was prepared to give tough and useful advice. However, there would be no question that they were opposed to the ethos of those schools in any way. I understand that the Church of England appoints roving bishops to deal with certain parishes. Perhaps we could have roving SIPs; I do not know how they would work. There must be some way of giving us assurances on this important issue.
I have said enough, as I want to give colleagues a chance to contribute. This is not a complex issue but it is very important and I want the Minister to take the amendment seriously. There is little point in having a debate on technical deficiencies in the amendment; it was tabled so that we could discuss the matter and assure the outside world that nothing we do in this Committee will affect the ethos of these very successful schools.
The reason they are so successful is not that they cherry-pick middle-class students, although that charge is often made against them, but because they have a very strong ethos that is based on their religion.

John Hayes: My hon. Friend makes a powerful case for faith schools, which I strongly support. It is the clarity of purpose that differentiates faith schools and many others that is summed up by their ethos and we should be loth to lose it, as it benefits large numbers of children, as I hope my hon. Friend agrees.

Edward Leigh: Yes. It is always worth sharing one’s experience. The school that my son attends, because it is a Catholic school in inner London, attracts children of a huge range of nationalities and many children with great difficulties. Being Catholic, the children are Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or French and come from all sorts of different social groups. The first language of many is not English, but the school has extraordinary success in binding them together and achieving first-rate academic results.
The school is oversubscribed: people want to get their children in to it. That is not because it receives more money, or because it particularly wants to attract middle-class children. Interestingly, however, middle-class people are happy to get their children into the school. If one is concerned about state education in the cities one should be concerned about creating schools that all types of people want to go to. The school is a success because of its ethos of love, discipline, faith and traditional values. That very delicate mixture has been nurtured over many years by dedicated teachers and head teachers.
That school and many others like it want to get on with the job that they know best. They are not failing or coasting; they get good academic results and they do not want somebody appointed by an local education authority to come in and interfere in the way in which they run themselves—the Minister must be aware of that concern. If schools are failing or coasting or there is a problem, fair enough, there is a role for external advisers. However, those schools already have external advisers.

Meg Hillier: I am puzzled by the hon. Gentleman’s comments. Is he suggesting that a head teacher or chair of governors of a different faith or denomination might not be good for a school? I can give him many examples of good people coming in to help faith schools who are of other faiths or of none. There seems to be a contradiction in what he says.

Edward Leigh: I am surprised by that intervention. I said for that very reason that this is a probing amendment. I do not suggest that the Committee accept my amendment and therefore insist that a school improvement partner of a faith school be of the same denomination. I made it clear that it is perfectly possible for somebody to give a school good advice without being of the same denomination. We merely want to ensure that the SIP appointed to a faith school that promotes family and traditional values is broadly sympathetic to the ethos of that school. He or she does not need to be of the same denomination.
Above all, the SIP appointed must not have a hidden agenda. I do not suggest that everybody should approve of faith schools—I know that many people do not like them—or that anybody should be forced to go to a school that has or does not have uniforms, or one that is or is not progressive. I am in favour of a rich mixture of schools. All that I am saying is that, particularly in difficult areas, there are schools that are extremely popular with parents and we should let them get on with the job that they know best. I hope that the Minister will reassure the Committee that SIPs will approach faith schools with a positive attitude of mind, so as to ensure that the best go on getting better and there is no attack on those excellent schools.

Sarah Teather: I accept that the amendment is probing. Nevertheless, its broad thrust is that all SIPs should be of the same religion or denomination as the school.
To try to define “sympathetic” is deeply unhelpful. As the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) mentioned, not all teachers or head teachers belong to the same denomination or faith as their school, and we should not require them to do so. Concern was expressed in earlier sittings about social divisions and the need to ensure that all schools that teach in the context of a particular faith understand the wider social context in which they exist. It is desirable to have teachers in all schools who do not necessarily represent a particular faith or denomination.
We should think about what we mean when we talk about a particular denomination. When we say a person is a Catholic, do we mean that they must have been baptised a Catholic, that they have taken their first holy communion, that they have been confirmed, or that they are practising? How Catholic do they need to be? Are we talking Opus Dei, or Ã la carte, like the majority of practising Catholics?

James Clappison: The hon. Lady has not yet mentioned the word “ethos”, which was key to argument made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). I think that he was asking that the person in question be sympathetic to the ethos of the school.

Sarah Teather: If the hon. Gentleman sits tight, I shall get to the word “ethos” shortly.
There are various ethoi in the Church of England. An Anglo-Catholic, someone with an evangelical approach, and a person with a more Protestant understanding of the Church of England’s teachings may have different views on the sacrament or the interpretation of biblical texts that would dramatically change the ethos of their approach to their faith and, in that context, their understanding and practice of their faith in education. It is impractical to deal with everything.
Not all lessons in faith schools are taught in the context of religion. It is difficult to believe that maths lessons would be dominated by faith or religious teaching. Perhaps in Reg Vardy’s schools biology might be dominated by particular teachings, but on the whole religion arises in assemblies or in lessons in other subjects on the curriculum. This amendment is deeply unhelpful and needs to be rejected.

James Clappison: I join in welcoming you to the Chair, Mr. Chope.
I am sympathetic to the amendment, which my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough tabled in a characteristically moderate and constructive way. I am slightly surprised by the response of the Liberal Democrat spokesman, because there seemed to be a vigour and vim in her remarks that did not quite catch the mood and spirit of the amendment as my hon. Friend intended it.
I agree with my hon. Friend that religious schools generally perform well. Schools of denominations of the Christian religions and of other religions perform well and are appreciated by parents. That is not a universal trait, but it seems to be a tendency. One of key factors in the appreciation of those schools by parents and in their success is the ethos that a religion or denomination helps to establish. I should have thought that there was a great deal of common sense in my hon. Friend’s approach, which is that the school improvement partner should at least be sympathetic to the denomination or religion in question. I should have thought that such an SIP would, by virtue of their sympathy, have a better understanding of the ethos and be in a stronger position to make a constructive criticism of the school if one were needed and, if necessary, could challenge its performance in living up to its ethos. I should have thought that that was a common sense approach. I should also think that parents could have more confidence in a person of such a nature and that the school and its governors would be more likely to listen to them.
The amendment was tabled in a moderate and attractive way and I hope that the Minister will seek to respond to it as such, not in the rather knee-jerk way that the Liberal Democrat spokesman responded.

Nadine Dorries: It is no secret that I am an advocate of faith schools. I was delighted to read in The Times recently that the UK is to have its first Hindu school. Whenever and wherever possible, I have educated my children in faith schools, so I can understand the desire of Hindu parents who felt the need for such a community faith school where they could education their children. One of the reasons I support the Bill wholeheartedly is that it will allow groups of parents, such as those voicing the need for the Hindu school, to have a voice, and it will enable and empower such parents to establish faith schools with a greater ease than before.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton made the case for SIPs who have expertise or knowledge in special needs. In particular, he spoke about a special needs child learning to read, stressing that only a teacher with a vocation and infinite patience would have the necessary sensitivity and deep understanding. The same argument must be applied to faith schools. Spirituality is the essence of all faith in whichever God. It requires a deep understanding and openness, if not sensitivity.
For those who do not have faith, the concept is difficult to understand. It is so difficult that, as the hon. Member for Brent, East has just demonstrated admirably, a lack of understanding can create fear that can cause people to criticise or ridicule those who have faith. I am not talking about chav ridicule; I am referring to academic ridicule. I have heard many academics be condemnatory and derisory about faith and faith schools.
Faith schools do not exist to be insular or inward-looking, which are criticisms often levied at them. Their purpose is to protect the young, who are moving forward in faith, and to help one generation pass to the next the culture and religion of that particular group. Statistics show that, quite often, faith schools have better academic outcomes than non-faith schools—

Christopher Chope: Order. I have given the hon. Lady a lot of latitude. The amendment is about school improvement partners in faith schools, not faith schools generally.

Nadine Dorries: I support the amendment to ensure SIPs who will have an understanding of the deep spirituality and objectives and aims of faith schools. I am worried that clause 5 might be used as a tool to limit spirituality and how it is taught in faith schools by pairing those schools with SIPs who do not understand or empathise with their aims. The Minister said that 26 SIPs have been allocated in 27 authorities.

Jacqui Smith: indicated dissent.

Nadine Dorries: I wrote it down as it was said—perhaps it could be checked. Which of those SIPs were allocated to faith schools? Has an assessment been made of the impact of SIPs on faith schools and on how they will work with faith schools? Will the Minister assure us that the ethos of faith schools and the way in which they operate and imbue children with their spirituality, religion and culture will not be affected by the allocation of SIPs who do not share that faith, understanding or spirituality?

Jacqui Smith: I shall respond to the amendment in the spirit in which it was tabled. Even the has the hon. Member for Gainsborough acknowledged that strict interpretation of the amendment, which would impose a narrow requirement on local authorities, would limit the range of SIPs that could be allocated to a particular school. It would go against some of the arguments about flexibility that were made to a previous group of amendments. However, I recognise that the hon. Gentleman tabled the amendment as a means to probe the relationship between SIPs and faith schools.
I can give at least some reassurance. First, diversity has always been a major feature of the English school system, and the present Government, far from seeking to iron out that diversity, are keen to develop and make use of it for the benefit of all pupils. That is part of what we hope to achieve through the Bill. We expect all SIPs, whatever their professional backgrounds and personal convictions, to understand that and the way in which it is represented in the school system.
We expect all school improvement partners in their work to be responsive to the individual circumstances and characteristics, including religious characteristics, of the schools with which they work. The national assessment for people who seek accreditation as SIPs, about which we have talked when debating previous groups of amendments, stresses that expectation. It is designed to withhold accreditation from anyone who might work with a school without taking account of its ethos and other features, and it is therefore a key requirement of a SIP that he or she should be responsive to the ethos and context of schools of any type.
At national level the Department has worked with the representative organisations of faith schools to make sure that Government policy developments take account of their concerns and to keep them abreast of developments. For example, my officials have discussed SIPs with the National Society for Promoting Religious Education, which is the education body for Church of England maintained schools, and with the Catholic Education Service. SIPs and other aspects of the “new relationship with schools” programme will be discussed at a meeting of the consultative group that we convene for representatives of all faith groups.
Those links ensure general understanding between the faith organisations and the Government, but of course for the SIP programme there is a specific additional benefit: we are able to encourage faith organisations to recommend that head teachers of faith schools apply for SIP accreditation. That led the Catholic Education Service, for example, to issue a note about SIP accreditation in one of its regular communications with head teachers of Roman Catholic schools. I hope that that will ensure the involvement of more high-quality head teachers and more head teachers who are likely to have first-hand understanding of the characteristics of faith schools.
We are asking local authorities, in their deployment and management of SIPs, to pay attention to the preferences as well as the needs of individual schools. In some cases those preferences may relate to SIPs’ religious beliefs, although as I explained in the debate on amendments Nos. 61 and 63 the choice of a school improvement partner for a school rests ultimately with the school’s maintaining authority, because the SIP is part of the school’s formal external accountability mechanism. Therefore, although discussion is appropriate, a veto or a choice by a school would not be.

Edward Leigh: I am very pleased with what the Minister has said so far. She used the word “responsive”, which is important. Does she also agree that a SIP appointed to a faith school should, without having to be of the same denomination, be broadly sympathetic to the concept of the faith school?

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman is pushing me to go slightly further than I have gone. I think that I made it clear that we expect all SIPs going through the accreditation process to be aware of the significance of diversity in the English education system and to be sympathetic to the diverse ethoi and religious characteristics of schools, so that they understand how such features affect a school. However, it would be difficult to go further and to expect a local authority, for example, to collect and maintain information about the religious convictions of its school improvement partners, or to determine their employment on that basis.
I hope that I have gone far enough to reassure the hon. Gentleman that we recognise the important contribution that faith schools make to the education system and that we have been willing to work alongside representatives of faith organisations to ensure that we recognise their concerns and the relevant issues as we develop the new relationship with schools policy and the SIPs policy.

Edward Leigh: I am very grateful for what the Minister has said. This has been a useful short debate and we have made progress. As she knows, there has been concern among some head teachers and in the Catholic Education Service, but we have received some reassurances from her. We know that the Minister believes that there should be a rich diversity of schools; we all believe that. We know, as we have presumably always known, that the Bill is designed to achieve that. She has said today that she expects SIPs to understand that, and therefore, presumably, not to have their own agenda. It would be wrong for a SIP to have an agenda either in favour of or against a particular type of school.
The Minister said that she wanted SIPs to be responsive to schools’ individual characteristics. I understand that she does not want to go so far as to say in upcoming discussions that particular schools should have a veto or that local education authorities should have resources to investigate a SIP’s background, but she used an interesting phrase. I hope that Hansard has an accurate record of her response to me. I think that she said that she would expect SIPs to be sympathetic to the religious characteristics of faith schools. I have achieved quite a lot today, and I am happy with what we have achieved, and so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 5 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 6

Functions in respect of recreation etc

David Chaytor: I beg to move amendment No. 183, in clause 6, page 4, line 13, leave out ‘adequate' and insert ‘sufficient'.

Christopher Chope: With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 185, in clause 6, page 4, line 13, leave out ‘adequate' and insert ‘such'.
No. 184, in clause 6, page 4, line 14, at end insert
‘as may be sufficient according to their needs'.
No. 149, in clause 6, page 4, line 15, after ‘may', insert
‘enter into partnerships with other public, private or voluntary organisations in order to'.
No. 236, in clause 6, page 4, line 18, after ‘centres,', insert ‘field centres,'.
No. 64, in clause 6, page 4, line 29, after ‘provision', insert ‘or commissioning'.
No. 150, in clause 6, page 5, line 30, at end insert—
‘(d) a local authority must have regard to the access requirements of qualifying young persons with a disability.'.
No. 23, in clause 6, page 6, line 27, at end add—
‘(3) Provision under this section shall be restricted to that which can be funded by the revenue support grant separately identified but not specifically allocated or ring-fenced.'.

David Chaytor: I am pleased to speak to the amendments, particularly to amendments Nos. 183 to 185, which are probing amendments designed to elicit the Minister’s response to clause 6 on local authority functions respecting recreation. I hope that the debate will be slightly less controversial than the debate on probing amendment No. 347.
I welcome the provisions in clause 6 that will strengthen and clarify such functions and update the provisions of the Education Act 1996. Local authorities’ role in providing recreational services for young people is more important now than ever, especially in the context of antisocial behaviour, a growing concern that all Committee members have experienced. It is indisputably one of the most striking social phenomena in the United Kingdom that for the past two to three years or perhaps longer, as the level of serious crime has fallen, the level of unpleasant, unacceptable antisocial behaviour—particularly but not only among young people—has increased. It could be argued that there is a link between the long-term decline in funding for youth services, such as the provision of community recreation facilities, and the declining capacity of some young people to occupy themselves creatively and constructively without resorting to drugs, alcohol, violence or personal abuse. That is the context in which clause 6 is particularly welcome.
My reservation about clause 6 is that it does not draw a sufficient link between local authorities’ responsibility to provide recreational services for young people and curriculum activities in schools. We need to forge a stronger link between what individual schools wish to provide for their young people as part of the national curriculum and wider extra-curricular activities and what services and facilities exist outside the school and need to be provided by local authorities. We have not yet forged that link.
I shall make four brief points. With luck, I shall make them before we break for lunch, to provide a convenient point from which to continue the debate this afternoon.
London’s success in securing the 2012 Olympic games gives the UK a unique, once-in-a-lifetime—arguably a once-in-a-century—opportunity to encourage vastly greater numbers of young people to take an interest in sport. The Government recognise that and have already brought significant levels of new investment into sport. I want to reinforce the absolute importance of using the Olympic bid as the hook to transform attitudes to sport and physical activity of a whole generation of young people.
The current requirement in our schools is a minimum of two hours a week of sport and physical education. I am not sure that that is enough. We need to build on it, and strengthening local authorities’ responsibilities will be a small encouragement.

Nick Gibb: The hon. Gentleman refers to the minimum two hours a week of sport. Does he have a feeling of what proportion of schools are achieving that?

David Chaytor: I do not have a feeling of that, but the hon. Gentleman asks an important question. It is something that we should seek to flush out from the Minister. It is important to get an accurate assessment, not just a feeling, of how many schools are fulfilling that requirement and how many are falling short. Let us bear in mind that it is a bare minimum requirement. If we are to transform attitudes among our young people, two hours a week is not really enough. Of course, the two hours a week in school needs to be supplemented by a number of hours outside school. That is where the clause comes in.
My second point is that within the national curriculum, to my recollection, there is an intention that all young people will have learned to swim by the age of 11. I am not sure that we have yet achieved that. My feeling is that we are some way short of it, but it is again important to identify precisely the levels of achievement of young people. It is not just an issue of recreation and pleasurable physical activity; it can be an issue of life or death in certain extreme circumstances. The Olympics give us an excellent opportunity to strengthen the role of swimming in our schools.
Thirdly, I wish to draw attention to the report of the Select Committee on Education and Skills published last year entitled “Education Outside the Classroom”. It contains a number of positive recommendations to strengthen the extra-curricular work done by schools, and I hope that it has contributed to turning the tide in favour of a much more positive attitude towards taking children outside the school, not only on longer-term expeditions but using the immediate environment as the content of educational experience. One or two of the amendments in this group refer to that matter. We need to open a much bigger debate on the way in which the immediate environment outside the school, school visits to places of interest, outward bound centres and, in certain circumstances, overseas visits, can enrich the curriculum and young people’s experience.

John Hayes: In talking about the important role of sport in schools, the hon. Gentleman draws attention to the amount of time that is available in the curriculum. Will he also say a word about access to facilities? Many school playing fields have been sold, not only under the present Government, but under previous Governments, and I suspect that public open spaces are declining. Many houses are being built with small or non-existent gardens, and the chances of children accessing public or other open space to engage in sport seem to be less than they once were.

David Chaytor: That is correct. I stress that far fewer playing fields have been sold off under the present Government than under the Conservatives, because the criteria for selling them off have been tightened, but the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We should also point out that in every suburban housing estate, the streets in which children could at one time play freely have been completely occupied by their parents’ 4x4 vehicles. We need to look more carefully at the question of land use planning.

It being One o’clock, The Chairman adjourned the Committee without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned till this day at Four o’clock.